5 Yuan

This is among the earliest notes issued by the People's Bank of China, which was founded on 1 December 1948 — meaning this note and the institution that issued it came into existence almost simultaneously, during the final phase of the civil war against the Nationalists. The First Series Renminbi was not a deliberate currency design program so much as a rapid consolidation of multiple Communist-administered regional currencies that had been circulating across liberated zones, each with its own exchange rate complications.

Printed under wartime conditions with limited standardization, First Series notes show considerable variation in paper quality and print registration across the run.